Michael Mascolo, and other PCP network participants:
Very nice analysis of the Vigotsky, Kelly, Rogoff positions!! I, for
one, appreciate it.
I will, however, go back to my original point: PCP as defined by Kelly
provides a slam-bang take off point for people who want to introduce
constuctivism into considerations about education.
Michael does point out that if one reads the Choice corollary for
exactly what it says, the emphasis is on the learner guiding his/her own
development.
But the theory is not limited to that one corollary, and that corollary
will gain greater utility by reference to the Sociality Corollary. [I again
point out that Finn Tschudi and Ragnar Rometveit wrote a superb chapter on the
Sociality Corollary.]
The teacher, following constructivist principles, will know that she/he
can play a more effective role in providing the frames that feed into the "zone
of proximal development" if she/he has a more comprehensive understanding of
the learner's construction system.
And the considerations that result from taking into account both the
Sociality Corollary and the Choice Corollary [along with the fundamental
postulate -- the "what makes one a person/learner" stance] lead to propositons
which sound very much like what would follow from working with Rogoff's
positions.
I am not discarding the value of Rogoff's position, I am only trying to
show that one can better understand that position if he/she has thought through
the implications of Kelly's original PCP position.
To illustrate further -- This kind of position [Rogoff's] depends very
much on trying to lay out the construct system of the learner. Only after much
diligent thought by people who have tried to work with positions like those of
Kelly and Piaget do we find that now we regard it as important to study
carefully the construction systems of children.
I happen to have turned to looking at the development of "emotion
related concepts" in children -- after an eight or nine year hiatus. I am
literally "shocked" by the tremendous amount of literature that one can now
find on this topic, compared to what one would have found ten years ago.
Anyone who wishes to prompt children to "understand their emotional
life" can now approach that task with an entirely different understanding than
was available before education experts took fully into account the proposition
that one can best play a role in a social process when he/she has a finer
system by which to construe the system of the other participants in the
process.
I would be ill-directed if I were to claim that the PCP people have
brought about this kind of change in the direction of psychology, but I will
insist that anyone who has worked extensively with PCP is in a sound position
to profit from this change and the work which has resulted from that change.
Jim Mancuso
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